The Backstreet Boys at the Sphere in Las Vegas: a perfect blend of nostalgia and colossal futurism that doesn’t even require their presence

Everything is so clichéd. Everything falls short. Beyond a simple “it’s incredible” or “it blows your mind,” it’s difficult to explain what it’s like to go to the Sphere in Las Vegas to see the Backstreet Boys. Thinking about the reasons why, a couple of things probably come together. First, the exceptional nature of the concert itself: the reunion of the five guys (or, by now, men) who played to sold out venues in the 1990s is a smash hit at a time when nostalgia seems to be the only lifeline. Second, the moment of communion, with 20,000 souls of all ages and backgrounds (though mostly female) dressed in white and silver, belting out hits from 30 years ago and recreating dance routines from their teenage years. But third, and above all, it’s the venue where they’ve chosen to do it: the Sphere in Las Vegas. When the sky opens up before you and it seems like you’re about to be abducted by a spaceship, or when a song called Siberia plays and the temperature drops several degrees, you know that what you’re seeing isn’t normal.

Truly, the Backstreet Boys’ performance is exceptional. Some people —read: this correspondent— are lucky enough to see the biggest pop concerts in the world, from Taylor Swift’s mega-tour to Beyoncé flying in a convertible or Lady Gaga as the queen of her own operatic life, not to mention the sprawling Coachella festival. In other words, there’s plenty to compare it to. And nothing compares. The Backstreet Boys have managed to take their songs, from the ballads to the dance anthems, to a venue unlike any other in the world, in a show designed to leave the audience breathless for 100 minutes. And they demonstrate their power even before they open their mouths.

Once you step onto the stage of the Sphere, it’s like entering another world. A retro-futuristic environment where the walls display turbines, cables, lights, and a central console that resembles a spaceship, alluding to the best-selling 1999 album Millennium, on which the tour is based. But the spaceship, like everything else, isn’t real, it only appears to be: everything is projected, nothing is real. That’s the magic of The Sphere. Its screens, with 53,000 square meters of LEDs and 16K resolution, cover an area the size of four football fields. It’s cutting-edge technology, but for humans, no matter how many screens we see daily, no matter how accustomed we are to technological tricks, it’s as if we had stepped out of the 15th century. Everyone is speechless, taking photos, zooming in with their phones, trying to understand what they’re seeing.

There’s plenty of time, because the Backes, as the millennials call them, keep us waiting 45 minutes before they start singing. And when they do, they’re the same youths from Florida who captivated millions of teenagers in the mid-nineties. They launch into “Larger Than Life,” the single from Millennium: it makes sense, because that’s the title of the tour, and because it’s a tribute and a thank you to their fans, who are already starting to scream their lungs out. That music video already had spaceships and robots and echoes of a 2000s future that didn’t quite turn out that way, as we know 26 years later. But nothing compares to what they show us now: when the performance begins, a spaceship rises across the giant circular screen of the Sphere. Then, the ceiling of the arena opens up (it only seems that way), the seats begin to shake, and the spaceship, which the audience appears to occupy, is launched into space, floating among the stars and passing between meteorites and other ships... and even projecting Nick, Brian, Kevin, Howie, and AJ onto the stage (again, it only seems that way: they actually emerge from beneath the stage). Out of this world.

It’s a stratospheric introduction, followed by 25 songs where the energy never lets up, it just keeps building. The music and the fans sing along nonstop, hugging their friends, showing off their belly buttons and butterfly clips in their hair, even though they’re well past their teens. As for the guys, there is the perfectly executed choreography, the costumes, and the stage sets with a touch of kitsch and fun (since it’s Valentine’s Day, they even throw roses into the audience). And on the screens, shattering glass that seems to hit the viewer, immense Tetris blocks floating in the air, beams of light... Yes, many may have experienced virtual reality or IMAX, but this is on another level. Sometimes, you have to hold on to your seat. There are amusement park rides that are tamer than this.

And what about them? To anyone not standing below, at ground level, the singers would seem tiny, minuscule, in the vastness and dizzying verticality of the Sphere. But, constantly projected onto its walls—whether live or with recordings and visuals created specifically for the venue—you barely look at the actual stage, but rather at what the space itself displays. Their voices, moreover (more so than AJ’s, perhaps the most overlooked in the nineties and now the most charismatic and best vocalist), go unnoticed. In reality, the Backstreet Boys themselves could just as well not be there; it almost makes no difference. The experience includes them, but it goes far beyond them.

the Sphere is everything, and they are the perfect accessories for the show. When you enter that immense spherical ball in the middle of the desert, visible for miles around and even from the air, everything is in shades of blue, white, and silver—the same colors worn by the band’s (mostly female) fans. Inside, T-shirts go for $60, jackets for $200, water glasses with the five guys’ faces on them for no less than $12, beers for around $25... It’s all a cash cow. And it’s not like the tickets were cheap: standing room tickets, the least expensive, didn’t sell below $600; seated tickets, around $1,000; and on the resale market, it wasn’t hard to find them (and watch them disappear) for $5,000. And that’s not even mentioning VIP packages, themed parties, and other crazy extravaganzas.

The Backstreet Boys have always been adept at navigating supply and demand. They’ve consistently done small tours (some quite large, reaching Europe and even China), and even had a residency in Las Vegas. But nothing compares to this. Their social media exposure has been a huge boon, with a concert that has gone massively viral, consumed nonstop by millennials in snippets on TikTok. They’ve been adding dates, but gradually. They kicked things off with nine concerts in the summer, gradually increasing the number and announcing a handful more in December, January, and February. The last one was this past Sunday, February 15th, on a sold-out weekend that coincided with Valentine’s Day on the 14th—in fact, they all dedicated songs to their wives and children, who were in the audience—and a long weekend in the United States on Monday the 16th. In short, everything was sold out, and then some.

When “As Long As You Love” plays, the girls—just like the boys, now fully grown—embrace their friends and partners. They’ll remember afternoons dancing in the schoolyard and cassette tapes rewound with a pen. the Sphere has already hosted U2 and the Eagles, and in the spring will feature No Doubt. The Backes, for their part, will be touring Germany this summer with a dozen concerts. But the blend of nostalgia and retrofuturism at The Sphere will be hard to top, both as a viral phenomenon and in the hearts of teens in their forties.

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